Capital Voices: 'That's what alcohol does — you fall off the edge of boats'

To mark Canada’s sesquicentennial, the Citizen’s Bruce Deachman met and photographed 150 people in the Ottawa area, encouraging them to tell their stories that, combined, painted an intimate portrait of the region and the people who live, work and play here. The series, which was published daily leading up to Canada Day, was called Capital Voices. It continues on a somewhat less rigorously defined schedule.

“I’m really happy that Canadians have taken the lead on Americans on legalizing marijuana, and doing it on a nationwide basis. It’s about time we grew up.

“The first time I smoked weed was in 1967. I was 17. We had a high school project — it was biology class — and we could choose our projects. So my friend Ian Carmichael and I devised a project where we would get these white rats — you know, the lab rats — we had three of them, cute little white things. And we were going to inject them. We were going to inject them with water and alcohol, and then we were going to get marijuana and, I don’t know, blow it on them or something. We weren’t really sure; we hadn’t figured that part out yet. But back then, that was all the talk; hippies were going to ruin the world, right?

“So we didn’t know what to do about getting this marijuana stuff. But we knew this one guy, Brian B —, in our school who smoked it. We used to watch him smoke it at lunch hour. If you’re out there, Brian, you’re an inspiration, bro. But we used to watch him at lunch hour, and then he’d go into class — this was a pretty strict high school, very straight — and he would just crack up, telling jokes and laughing. It was entertainment. So he would know where you could get this stuff, this marijuana.

Ian had a licence, so he had a car, or he could borrow a car. And we were going to go to the east end of Hamilton.

“Brian told us to get together 25 or 30 dollars, which was a huge amount of money back then. So we give him the money and we go down to the east end of Hamilton. I think it was a ’64 Impala, with a 327 in it. Aquamarine. So we park and we give Brian the money and he goes literally across the tracks — I remember thinking, ‘Oh, so that’s where that’s from’ — and he went down the road, and then about 30 minutes later he comes back. And he’s got this baggie with mostly sticks. So we say thanks, and now we have to get some cigarette papers and roll it up. Everybody rolled tobacco back then, so we figure it’s not that hard to do.

“So we get together on a Saturday morning. This is our controlled experiment. We’re going to inject a rat with the water and see what happens. And nothing happens. But we figured that, right? Water is your … what do you call it in an experiment? … Your baseline. Yeah, that’s it.

“Then we injected the next one with the alcohol. And there was a boat parked in this garage area where we were doing the experiment, at Ian‘s house. So we put the rat up onto the edge of the boat and it walked about three or four steps and then keeled over and fell off the boat. And we thought, ‘Well, we’ve seen grown-ups do that.’ So there you go; that’s what alcohol does — you fall off the edge of boats.

“Now we have one more rat, and we roll up this horrible joint. Then I went first. I puffed on it and held the rat in my hand and blew on it. Then it was Ian‘s turn, and he puffed on it and held the rat and blew in his face. And then we said we’re not really sure how much this is. We knew how many cc’s of alcohol and how many cc’s of water, so we thought we better do it again just to be sure. So I did it again. Then Ian did it again.

“So this was in the morning, sometime around 11:30. And I think it was sometime around 12:30 — just after lunch, because I heard Ian’s mother saying, ‘Do you boys want something to eat?’ There wasn’t a clock in the garage, but it was sometime around there. That’s when Ian’s mother came down and found us laying on the floor of the garage with the little white rats running over us, and we were just laying there while the rats played with us. The one was licking our faces and curling up around our neck and going down our shirts. We were just super chillin’. But back then, you had no pre-judgment. You weren’t told to be afraid. You were not told to be fearful. You didn’t have that implanted in your youthful memory chips.

“So we wrote up our project. For the third part, we just said what happened. And there were no ill effects to the experimental rats.

“I think what it really comes down to is that you’ve got to understand it from a … yeah, there’s the kick-back-and-enjoy-yourself-in-the-privacy-of-your-own-home thing and that kind of stuff; do what you need to do to chill out at the end of the day. It’s a lot better than pharmaceuticals.

“So yeah, it’s about time we mature and grow up and get away from that paranoia and the industrial military complex B.S. that’s affecting the world, spiritually and mentally.”

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Capital Voices: 'That's what alcohol does — you fall off the edge of boats'